Crop Insurance in India: A Façade or Reality | Original Article

ABSTRACT:

Farming indeed is a profession of hope blighted with untoward climatic incidents. The unpredictable weather changes and related risks thwart the agricultural productivity gains and put farmers in a challenging situation leading to extreme hopelessness and suicides. In the independent India, the policy makers have unrolled various avatars of crop insurance by way of different schemes but crop insurance seems to have remained a failed attempt. The need and usefulness of agricultural insurance in risk mitigation are not in question here rather it is consistent fall in the acreage and the number of farmers covered under the umbrella of these policies that are the cause of the concern. The paper provides an overview of crop insurance schemes in the past and the present. Also it makes an attempt to analyze the status of India‘s flagship crop insurance scheme- Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) which is in its second phase of implementation in the country at present so as to check the viability of the existing insurance laws in the country.